[Warning political ramblings: feel free to tune out for a while and come back when I’m under hawk attack again]

Back in 2008 I watched a video with Peggy Joseph. In 2011 I revisited it with How’s That Working Out For Ya? I posted the video below for comparison. She seemed like an earnest young woman who was sincere in her belief that Obama could make everything better. She hadn’t drank the kool-aid, she was steeped in it. She was sure that, should Obama be elected, she wouldn’t have to worry about buying gas or paying her mortgage. Money quote: “If I help him, he’s gonna’ help me.” Check it out:

At the time I felt like we’d hit rock bottom. Here was a woman who thought the president was going to solve all her problems, tuck her in to bed at night, and possibly walk on water. Where do you go from there?

Now I know. For 2012 we go from free gas to free Obamaphones. The new money quote: “Keep Obama in president…” Watch it below:

Holy cow! I can’t help marvelling at the verbal train wreck. The visual takes away from the beauty of her words so I added a transcript:

[Obamaphone Lady] Obama!

[Reporter] You got an Obama phone?

[Obamaphone Lady] Yes! Everybody in Cleveland, low minorities, got Obama phone. Keep Obama in president, you know? He gave us a phone!

[Reporter] He gave you a phone?

[Obamaphone Lady] He gonna do more!

[Reporter] How did he give you a phone?

[Obamaphone Lady] You sign up. If you’re… If you on food stamps, you on Social Security, you got low income, you disability…

[Reporter] Okay, what’s wrong with Romney, again?

[Obamaphone Lady] Romney, he sucks! Bad!

One could be upset. One could look at this and think we’re screwed as a nation. I see it as fascinating. It describes a world so very far away from anything I can imagine. All I can think is; “here is someone who can’t create a sentence“. For the most part I thought everyone could form a sentence. A child can say “I see the dog running.” Compare this to “Keep Obama in president, you know?” and “If you on food stamps, you on Social Security, you got low income, you disability.”

There are people that say things like “you disability“? I tend to forget this.

Lets explore something else. The 2008 video of Peggy Joseph felt like rock bottom but it was a shining beacon compared to “Obamaphone lady”. Consider Peggy:

She could speak in complete sentences!

She had made a deliberate decision about her kid’s education. (She took her child out of school to attend a political rally.) I might not select a political rally as “educational” but it’s an idea with merit. Any mother who’ll provide her kid with educational events beyond the confines of a school is doing a good thing.

She had a car. (How else could she look forward to Obama releasing her from the worry of buying gas?) I assume she can drive too. There’s even a likelihood that she has a job?

She had a house. (How else could she look forward to Obama releasing her from the worry of paying a mortgage?) This is another hint that she has a job.

It just goes to show that whenever you think you’ve hit the lowest ebb, there’s farther to fall. Best to enjoy what you’ve got. For example, Peggy seems like a truly nice person and her 2012 analogue seems like a disaster. I miss Peggy.

A.C.

P.S. I realize that in any population there are the outliers. Presumably there’s a video somewhere of knuckle dragging morons who are Romney supporters. I just haven’t seen it.

16 Responses to Free Gas Versus Free Phone

Since the mainstream (majority Liberal) media would absolutely LOVE to run a video of some terra cotta toothed imbecile supporting Romney there’s persuasive evidence for its non-existance in the fact that they haven’t. On the other hand they have, in the last couple of decades, proved themselves so ostentatiously incompetent that I suppose the possibility of one still exists.

After all, “Obamaphone!” is an easier thing to bleat than “Four legs good, two legs better.”

This poor woman is a victim. Sadly, there are too many people who are basically penned sheep because race pimps, socialist politicians, and venial entertainment execs can milk them for cash and votes.
Makes me mad, it does. She’s willing to sell her freedom, prosperity, and the same for her offspring for a free phone.

I have learned that even referencing either of these two videos marks you as the worst sort of galloping racist.

This bothers me. I mean, I’m a horrible classist (to quote P.J. O’Rourke’s grandma, “Nobody’s so poor they can’t pick up their own yard,”) but anybody who can tell the difference between a chromosome and a Kodachrome can tell you that “race” is a completely made-up thing.

Many moons ago when I was a wee lad (young enough that I can’t quite remember how old I was…) some adults were talking about race. I asked “so can either group provide a blood transfusion for the other”. (I think I’d seen a blood transfusion on MASH…kids learn stuff everywhere.) All the adults at the table turned at the little kid (me) and agreed that yes a transfusion from one race to another was no big deal. “Then it’s all in people’s heads” I said. I had nothing more to contribute and went back to playing with Legos. I don’t know how old I was but I think I’d already hit upon the “made-up” ness of race.

Race is not made up. After all, people with African DNA, Asian DNA, and European DNA all have different dispositions to various disease processes. From a genetic standpoint, races are different. From a social standpoint, culture is more of a determining factor than genetics.

Skin color, body shape, and internal biology are all the products of evolution. The physically visible characteristics are really only a product of our recent lineage, and can change rather rapidly.

Were you take a group of people who’s ancestors have lived off the land (hunter-gatherer style) in equatorial Africa for thousands of years, and transplant them into a normally indoor lifestyle (rarely outside) in a city like Boston, MA, and in a few generations they would become shorter, stockier, and their skin would gradually lose it’s dark pigment, even if they only bear offspring with the descendants of other members of the original group.

The reverse is also true: if you transplant a bunch of light-skinned suburbanites from Boston into equatorial Africa, within a few dozen generations their decendants’ skin will have darkened considerably; they will also have become taller and leaner.

Different reactions to disease between “races” is merely a reflection of what our ancestors were exposed to. The reason why those of European lineage seem to fare so much better is because of our ancestral history of living in highly unsanitary conditions in the cities of Europe during the middle ages and before: We come from stock that already had those with weak genes killed off. In short, it’s pure Darwinian evolution; Survival of the fittest. Europeans had several centuries of living in deplorable conditions, and as such they adapted.

In short, each of us incorporates thousands of generations of adaptations to the conditions faced by our ancestors. That doesn’t grant us moral superiority over one another, although it can make us ideally suited for certain types of work.

“After all, people with African DNA, Asian DNA, and European DNA all have different dispositions to various disease processes.”

The “African DNA” that controls, say, the propensity for sickle cell anemia isn’t at all linked to the one responsible for skin pigmentation or hair texture. Assuming that a cursory glance at a person’s melanin content is the same as decoding their genome is just fatuous.

The visual takes away from the beauty of her words so I added a transcript: But the transcript deprives others of the dulcet tones of her voice. She sounds, perhaps, like a rabid cat whose vocal cords have been dragged across sandpaper.

The Po Valley of northern Italy drains into the Adriatic Sea. Descendants of that region where malaria once was found can be fair skinned and blonde or red-haired from Celtic or Germanic ancestry, yet can still be carriers of Thalassaemia or Sickle Cell Anemia/Sickle Cell Trait. Sometimes we are truly brothers of another mother.

I dunno. I guess my depression really must be doing better these days, because I almost can’t help but look at the possible silver cloud about the first video.

The woman says she “won’t have to worry” about gas or her mortgage. The silver lining is this: those words in the english language could merely mean that she thinks her circumstances will improve under an Obama administration such that she won’t be as concerned about her situation. It doesn’t necessarily imply that she thinks Obama will actually buy her gas or pay her mortgage. Now, recent history suggests that didn’t work out all that well, but it’s not an impossible thought.

To turn it around, I could say (though I probably wouldn’t) that a Romney win might let me not worry about putting gas in my car (because he’ll let us drill and the price will come down) or pay my mortgage (because he won’t do things that make businesses actively not want to expand) and he might well stop the Fed from hyperinflating the dollar. It certainly wouldn’t be that I thought he was going to pay for those things for me, but rather that I would think he’ll improve the economy enough that I can more readily pay for them myself.

Working at the University I graduated from is somewhat depressing in this particular light. It’s been 12 years since I graduated (almost 13), I’m making roughly 66% of what I made in my first job out of college, and at that job, I remember distinctly being outraged that I had to pay $2.05 for gasoline, on the San Francisco Peninsula.

So yeah, I worry about gas and the mortgage (back in Albuquerque, now) and will probably worry more if Obama wins another turn at the tiller.